On the Banks of the Lethe
by RoslinSharp
Summary: Before she was Racetrack, she was Margaret Edmondson, a simple girl from Libran who wanted to see the stars.


Before she was Racetrack, she was Margaret Edmondson. Born on Libran, she was Marggie to most folks, Margaret to her family, and Mags to her closest friend.

Libran is known mainly known to the 12 colonies for its courthouses and lawyers. Unfortunately for Maggie, she was born in the impoverished farming sector, famous for its peppers and spices. Her father was an alcoholic who left the family, her mother works in the factories. It's a miserable place and she hates it from the start.

Maggie's always been a rebel, skipping school to smoke cigarrettes with the older kids..She loses her virginity to an older boy who can't frak worth a damn. It hurts and her back aches from lying on the cold, hard ground, but it's better than going to class. Not that school matters, anyway. Less than half of her classmates will actually makes it to graduation. Yeah, a scant few might make it to the the main continent and attend univerity. Most, though, just drop out to work in the farms, the factories, and the mills with the rest of their stupid families. Her older sister Tara was already married and pregnant at 16, destined for the same life as their mother. Maggie doesn't want any of those options. She wants to see the stars.

Maggie herself is 17 and, despite her best efforts, she's set to graduate at the top of the class when she meets him. Off world visits to her corner of the planet are rare, but they happen every now and then. Stalek, is what he calls himself when she runs into him outside of her brother-in-law's spice shop. He's twice her age and only a little bit good-looking, but he's from Caprica and full of tales of life among the other colonies.

"I was bound for Geminon," he says as he caresses her face with his rough fingers, "flights got criscrossed, I wound up here. I thought I was totally frakked, never thought I'd find a number like you in this damn place."

She lies across the bed, smoking cigarette after cigaretee in his shabby hotel room, listening to his stories of life among the stars. He may not be the best lover she's ever had, but he's definitely the most interesting. Stalek even promises to take her with him when he catches the next shuttle off Libran. For a moment, she even believes him. Of course, it's all a ploy to get into her pants. She comes back to his room one day to find him gone. Scattered postcards amid soiled sheets are all that remains of their time together.

Two months later and she finds there's something else Stalek left behind. She lays a hand on her growing belly and curses the day she met him. Her fundamentalist mother looks upon her in condescension, refusing to let her underage daughter have an abortion. Her sister scolds her for not having enough sense to get pregnant by a local she could marry. She screams and rails against them both, saying her life is worth more than raising some frakking loser's baby. Neither of them will budge.

Seven months later, her daughter Anya is born.

She's heard way too much bullshit about the wonders of childbearing, how it's going to be the happiest day of her life."Don't worry," Tara tells her, "once you see your baby you'll fall in love with it and forget all that nonsense." Maggie takes one look at her newborn daughter, red and wrinkled, and knows she has to get off this frakking planet.

Of course, there's only one way a Libran of her class and station can leave; the military.

She prepares for her academy exams in secret. Anya sleeps in her basinet while Maggie does pushups on the floor, praying she'll be in shape in time for her physical.

Her fears come to nothing. She passes the test with flying colors, while the doctor declares she's exceeded all the fitness parameters. Her mother is another matter.

"So you're just going to walk away from your daughter, from me, so you can be some hotshot miliary whore! You're trash Margaret, just like your father. You won't even last six months before you come crawling back to me. Just you wait!"

Even Tara looks dubious when Maggie tells her the news, but she's willing to raise Anya alongside her own children.

The day Maggie boards the shuttle and sets sail for training on Picon is the happiest day of her life. She never looks back.

…

The moment Maggie sets eyes on a Raptor she knows she's in love. She works her ass off for two years in training, skipping leave, (there's nothing left at home for her, anyway), striving for the top marks she needs to get into flight school. Her superior officer looks at her doubtfully when she tells her where she wants to go. Pilots usually come from the richer colonies, like Caprica and Picon. Lucky for Maggie, her instructor isn't a racist scumbag. She looks at Maggie's top marks and signs her off.

Maggie's not a natural pilot but she gets by on hard work and sheer determination. Her first time in the air is a total frak up. She loses her control of her bird, flying past her classmates and flaring in circles around the battlestar assigned to the class.

"What the frak happened to you out there, cadet, this is a frakking training exercise, not a godsdamned racetrack," her instructor booms. Then he looks at her and his mouth shapes what might have almost been a smile. "Hey, I think we just found a call sign for our new nugget!"

Maggie goes to her bunk that night with a sense of pride. She's been pulled from the classroom for a week and assigned to the hangar deck, but none of it seems to matter. She has a callsign, a name, and for the first time in her life, Margaret Edmondson's finally found a place she belongs.

She's been away for three years when she finally gets a message from home. Her instructor, Captain Lafette, the same man who gave Maggie her call sign, pulls her aside at the beginning of class and tells her the news.

"Word just came from Libran. I'm sorry kid, your Mom's passed away. We've got a shuttle prepped to take you home."

The funeral is short and to the point. A blessing by an oracle, a few words of remembrance from her sister and a few of her mother's colleagues, and Helen Edmondson's remains are dropped into the earth. Throughout the entire service, Maggie sits stoically, not shedding a single tear. She doubts she would have wept even if she and her mother had parted on good terms. Maggie's never been much for crying, even as a child. She's as hard as the earth she comes from.

Her sister, on the other hand, sobs throughout the entire service. Maggie awkwardly places an arm around her. (She's never been a fan of physical affection either.) Tara whispers as they place their mother in the ground. "We already have a spare room made up for you at the house."

"I'm staying at the military base tonight. They're sending me over to a stupid ceremony tomorrow morning early, something about an old warship getting decommissioned. If I stayed at your place, I'd just wake you up when I left in the middle of the night."

"Stop this nonsense Margaret. I need to see you and so does _she_."

She looks around. The kids are noticeably absent. She vaguely recalls something Tara's husband, Daniel, said about wanting them away from all this misery.

"Fine," she says. What does it matter; it will only be one night.

Maggie sees the children playing in the field as they drive up to the house. Two of them are her nephews with Daniel's red face and long nose, but the other...Maggie's heart skips a beat at the sight of her.

"Anya," Tara says as they get out of the car, "this is your mother."

She's inherited Stalek's pale blue eyes, but everything else is Maggie, from the brown curly hair to the impish smile she flashes as she slowly approaches her mother.

"Hi," she says shyly."I was playing with Robbie and Liam in the field. Do you want to dance with me?"

Maggie squats down so she can look her daughter straight in the eyes.

"No honey, but I'd like to watch."

Time seems to stop as she watches her daughter twirls amid the growing pepper plants. She'd cared for Anya as a baby, reluctantly, but she'd never really loved her the way mothers were supposed to. But now, watching her four year old daughter, perfect and happy, she's overwhelmed with feelings of regret and loss.

"It's getting late," she says abruptly. "I need to be out of here at three in the morning."

Without another word, she marches into the house and throws herself on the guest bed, willing herself not to cry.

...

She gets ready in a hurry the next morning, throwing her dirty clothes in her duffel bag and quickly brushing her teeth. (They'll hand out breakfast on the shuttle ride.) She opens her bedroom door to find Anya sitting in the hall waiting for her.

"Anya? What are you doing out here?"

The little girl looks up at her sheepishly. "I wanted to see you before you go. I have a present for you."

Anya stands up and hands her mother a tiny clay figure that looks like a cross between a camel and a giraffe. (Artistry has never run in the Edmondson family.)

Maggie's been through some of the most hellish training the military has to offer but, in front of her four year-old daughter, she finds herself utterly tongue-tied.

"Uncle Daniel told me they call you Racetrack," Anya continues. "So I made a horse for you in class."

Maggie finally recovers her voice enough to say, "Thank you, sweetheart."

Anya looks up at her mother wistfully.

"Promise you'll come back? I want to see the stars."

Maggie looks into her child's eyes and sees her own self staring back at her. The same feelings of boredom, restlessness, the need to get off this frakking rock reside in Anya, too. She scoops up her daughter and holds her, tears running down her face.

"Yes baby, I'll come back to you. And maybe, someday, we can leave this place together."

….

Her name is Racetrack and godsdamn anyone who calls her differently. She's bitter and cynical but damned good at her job. Over the months, she's worked her way up to become one of the best Raptor pilots in the fleet.

She plays cards with her fellow pilots, drink, jokes around, and occasionally hooks up with her shipmates for a good frak or two. If anyone asks her past, she'll make up some crap story about being an orphan from Picon and leave it at that.

But no one will ever call her Maggie again. Margaret Edmondson died the day the colonies were destroyed.

Though she was never religious as a girl, skipping temple services the same way she skipped school, she lights a candle for Anya every morning. In her mind, there's only one reason why the gods chose to spare her life, but took her daughter's. She will spend the rest of what's left of her life blowing the toasters out of the sky. And in her pocket, on every mission, she carries a misshapen clay horse.


End file.
